76 11th Avenue

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has released new design details and a teaser site for its first New York condominium and hotel project at 76 Eleventh Avenue near the High Line in West Chelsea (h/t Designboom). Known as “The Eleventh,” or as it’s being written now, The XI, the project is comprised of a pair of twisting asymmetrical bronze and travertine towers joined by a skybridge. The building’s windowed facade is said to be inspired by the Meatpacking District’s iconic warehouses.

For new developments, 2015 was the year of reveals, but 2016 was all about watching these buildings reshape our city. Ahead we’ve narrowed a list of 12 news-making residential structures, each noted for their distinctive design, blockbuster prices, or their game-changing potential on the skyline or NYC neighborhoods.

Which of these you think deserves 6sqft’s title of 2016 Building of the Year? Have your say below. Polls for our third annual competition will be open up until 11:59 p.m., Sunday, December 11th*, and we will announce the winner on Tuesday, December 13th!

In a press release announcing that HFZ Capital Group is bringing a 137-key luxury Six Senses hotel and spa to Bjarke Ingels‘ pair of travertine-and-bronze towers along the High Line, 6sqft has learned that the $1.9 billion project at 76 Eleventh Avenue will officially be known as The Eleventh. The hotel announcement –which is interesting because in December 2015, the original plans for a hotel were replaced with office space–also came with several new renderings of the 28- and 38-story buildings, which are distinguished by their twisting silhouettes, glowing crowns, and two amenity-filled podium bridges that connect them.

When the SHoP Architects-designed American Copper Buildings were first revealed, it wasn’t as much their twisting silhouettes that made headlines as it was their diagonal, amenity-filled skybridge. The three-story bridge, boasting a lap pool and lounge and topped with private terraces, is located 300 feet above the street, the highest such structure in the city and a new concept in enticing residents to the luxury market. And just this week, Bjarke Ingels unveiled new views of his High Line towers, which will feature two skybridges. Though they’re much closer to the ground, they’re also planned as amenity spaces, which makes us wonder–is this architectural feature set to become a new trend in NYC?

The fresh images reveal the glass crowns at the 300- and 400-foot tops, the retail podium and plaza fronting the High Line, and two amenity-filled podium bridges that will connect the towers (an idea perhaps borrowed from SHoP’s American Cooper Buildings).

New renderings have appeared via YIMBY for 76 Eleventh Avenue, the Bjarke Ingels-designed High Line-adjacent towers first revealed this past November. The planned project, developed by HFZ Capital with the goal of creating a “self contained kind of city,” was expected to include a hotel, retail space, and around 300 luxury condos with prices to start at just below $4 million. The most noticeable changes from the earlier renderings, which showed the towers fitting together at an angle, show more space between the buildings, which now appear as more of a pair than two complementary parts of a “jigsaw-like” whole.

The latest project to come from starchitect-of-the-moment Bjarke Ingels is a set of towers that will rise along the High line at 76 11th Avenue. The renderings made waves a month ago when the angular, asymmetrical structures were revealed, and at this time it was also announced that the project would encompass a hotel, retail space, and around 300 luxury condos. But new plans filed by developer HFZ Capital Group, first uncovered by The Real Deal, show that the towers’ four-story base will not include a hotel, but rather retail and office space, likely because “[commercial office space] vacancy rates in the [Meatpacking District] are notoriously low–around 2 percent–while prices are high.”

The High Line is continuing its trajectory as the destination for the city’s most exciting new architecture, and it looks like another starchitect could soon join the already impressive roster of designers making their mark on the area. The New York Post reports that HFZ Capital Group is currently in the works to bring a “monumental” new structure to a lot located next to the elevated park at 76 11th Avenue—a site that spans from 17th to 18th and across 10th to 11th Avenues. Although the parcel is still in contract (expected to close in April), HFZ has reportedly already tapped Bjarke Ingels (BIG) and Rem Koolhaas for initial drawings, which were revealed by the company’s head, Ziel Feldman, yesterday at the Young Men’s/Women’s Real Estate Association luncheon. The renderings are said to show “triangular structures that won’t block views”.